Elsie is pulled into the mob of the Desert Clan. The crowd of horned warriors seems to swallow her whole. Amber is pulled away moments later, and that’s when Adriano, Demian and I explode into a full-on frenzy.

I rip my skullspear from Bacillius’ leg, and I swing it across, cutting open the throat of the first man moving to oppose me.

“Wait!” Adriano shouts, putting himself between the Desert Clan and Demian and me. “We won the duel. Hand the women back to us.”

I stop, but I’m clutching the hilt of my skullspear so tight that my knuckles are going white. I’m ready to kill as many of my former can as it takes to get my bonded mate back.

Then I see her. A man with horns nearly as large as mine is holding Elsie against his body. He’s got one of the guns in his hand, and it’s pointing right against Elsie’s temple. Amber is being held too, by the other gunner.

“This dishonor!” I roar. “The worms that the sandsucker eats has more honor than you! You’ve fallen below insects!”

“Money will make up for that,” the one holding Elsie says. “Now back away, so we don’t have to kill all of you.

Something catches my eye, movement on the edge of the mountain. I glance up to see three black shapes cut across the disc of the sun.

I notice others behind me shielding their eyes with their hands to look up.

“That’s an imperial flying machine,” the gunner holding Amber says. “We signalled that we had you as soon as you ran toward the mountains. You never stood a chance. If you run now, maybe the emperor will spare you?”

I look at Adriano and Demian. I can tell by their stoney faces that they feel the same way I do. None of us will run.

“I will appeal to the emperor,” I shout, throwing down my spear. I point to the body of Bacillius. Perhaps our ruler still has a shred of honor!”

I take a step toward them, but they grab Elsie and pull her back, pressing the gun’s barrel hard against her temple. “Don’t get any fucking closer!”

Elsie is looking at me with an admonishing glare. I know her now. I know her through the bond, and through the words and experiences we shared and exchanged. The things we lived through together. She fears I will trade my life and hers for honor in the afterlife. She fears I will do something stupid.

I will not. I have learned much from her. When I look over at Adriano and Demian, I can feel they have learned too, from this Amber woman.

“Fuck,” Demian hisses. “We have to hope the Emperor will respect the results of the duel. After Titus here murdered a Magistros, and stole one of his prized alien females away…”

“You three didn’t steal one?” I growl.

“She fell into our laps,” Adriano says. “A blessing from the sky.”

The three flying machines move silently toward us, growing in size as they approach. They hover directly above us, and I realize we’re all looking up now, waiting for the Emperor’s judgement. Could he have seen our duel from beyond the mountains? Do his machines give him the gift of farsight?

I realize my chances are horrible. Even if the Emperor acknowledged my victory, who are the Desert Clan to gamble away the Emperor supposed property. I realize, with growing dread, that the best case outcome is not good at all.

When the Emperor realizes Elsie is bonded to me, he’ll likely find little value in her. The best case, then, is that he executes me for my crimes, but spares Elsie. If he’s a pragmatic man, and if he can acknowledge that it was all my fault, then he might just spare Elsie. He could let her live a good life in the capital.

Unlikely. Incredibly unlikely, but it’s what I will fight for. I do not allow myself to say that this is for my own honor. I will not die for honor, but if this is the only way for either of us to make it out of the situation alive, then I will sacrifice for Elsie. For my bonded mate. Not for honor, but for her. The only way I can live on now is in her memory.

Bright beams of violet light lash out from the ships. I wonder if it’s going to just disintegrate us entirely, but then the lights move, and they shove hordes of warriors back and away from the alien women. I see the field of light approach me, and I dig my heels in. When the light hits me, it shoves me back, like the strongest and most solid wall, though I can see right through it. It sweeps me back and further away from Elsie.

Two thin beams blast down from one of the flying machines, and the guns being pointed at Elsie and Amber’s heads melt into piles of metal. The molten metal covers the hands of the gunmen, and they shriek and writhe in pain on the ground as the metal cools back down, fusing to their skin.

I shout for Elsie, and she runs toward me. We press against the wall of light, and it looks almost as if our hands are touching, but I cannot feel her skin or her warmth.

Amber is next to her, and Adriano and Demian are trying as hard as they to break through the wall of light, with no success.

One of the flying machines lower itself to the ground, and an opening forms in the side of the machine. A ramp forms out, seemingly made of jet-black water, but it hardens into a metal, and a man with huge horns and a purple cape begins walking down the ramp.

He’s an imposing figure, but my full attention is not on him, but on the Earth woman holding his hand. She’s walking next to him, and though she’s several heads shorter than him, and no taller than Elsie, she walks and moves like a female Emperor.

I hear everyone around me hissing and growling. The Twilight Clan hates the Emperor, regardless of who it may be at the time.

But for me, hope rises up in my chest. I feel it surge through me, and I pray to the sun and the sky that this new Emperor could maybe understand the bond Elsie and I share. An Emperor who treats a human woman as his equal rather than his property, I can tell by the way he looks down at her. The way she smiles up at him as they reach the bottom of the ramp.

Elsie has been looking up over her shoulder at them, her back to me. Then she rushes forward. Amber just stares with her mouth open as Elsie crashes into the Emperor’s bride, wrapping her arms tight around her. The two women hug each other, and Amber starts to walk toward them slowly tilting her head. She glances back toward us and mouths something, but I can’t understand her–sound travels poorly through the wall of light.

Elsie breaks her embrace of the woman and waves her arm at me. She points toward the woman and mouths two syllables.

“Alice,” I say to Demian and Adriano. “She is friends with our women.”

“Alice is the Emperor’s bride?” Demian shouts. “Does that mean…”

The light wall collapses, and the Emperor throws his cape back, looking toward us.

As the wall of light falls, everyone else starts shouting.

“We caught them!” one of the Desert Clansmen shouts. “Your Highness! My most exalted leader! We took up your bounty. We found them–”

“It was not my bounty!” the Emperor roars. “It was from the man I killed. The one who preceded me.”

They Desert Clansmen start grumbling, but one steps forward, bowing. “Your new Highness. Most newly exalted leader...with respect, Highness, we didn’t know. Does the new Emperor not respect that these bounties, for which we made great sacrifices…”

The Emperor holds up a hand, silencing him. “You sacrificed this one.” He points toward Bacillius. “And lost a duel. What were the terms?”

That shuts everyone up. There’s a telling silence from the hundreds of Desert Clansmen, louder than any protest.

“Leave,” the Emperor says. “Go back to your Desert, and never again are you to treat a woman of Earth like this again. These women are our future. Our new sun.”

He puts a hand around Alice and pulls her against his body. Alice looks down, and puts a hand onto her belly.

Impossible. She couldn’t be pregnant. If she’s pregnant, then…

I look to Elsie, and I start to imagine–I dare to wonder what it might be like, if we could have a baby. What would that be like?

“But–” one of the Deser Clan starts to say.

The Emperor rips his skullspear out from behind his cape, and he throws it with brutal force. It goes straight through the eye of the man who dared to speak, silencing him. He drops to the ground in a heap.

“Go to your desert!” the Emepror roars. “And tell all you meet of my command. And of the mercy of Emperor Proximus.”